


The Whole of It

by pettiot



Series: Professionals Timeline [7]
Category: The Professionals (TV 1977)
Genre: Injury
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-14
Updated: 2011-04-14
Packaged: 2021-02-27 04:48:40
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 489
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22241326
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pettiot/pseuds/pettiot
Summary: A bullet through the hand might mean amputation.  Bodie is shot through his right and left reeling.  Set pre 'Close Quarters'.
Series: Professionals Timeline [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1600894
Kudos: 2





	The Whole of It

Bodie thought he was enjoying his bouts with the doctor. Put every bit of his wheedling charm into their exchanges, gaining no ground each time. Building a barricade of false self-confidence, holding back the fear. Fun.

Sitting on the doc’s bench, he tried to clench his fist, welcoming the burst of pain, the resistance of healing flesh.

The early days had been much less fun. The incomprehensible terror, sickening, vertiginous; himself, lurching, needing a certainty no medical or trusted authority would give. The bullet went through Bodie’s hand, and not cleanly. He hadn’t looked at the wound when staggering to the car, only at Doyle’s white face, his partner’s wild fear articulated as rage. At the hospital, Cowley’s staunch pity had horrified Bodie, masked but not well enough. Until they had knocked him out, Bodie held his own wrist tight, felt his pulse roaring, arteries afire with apprehension. He was irrational. If no one saw the wound, no one could possibly say how bad it was.

Small target, lots of working parts, one great fat bullet.

For the first few days, they talked amputation.

Doyle was hopelessly cheerful. Bodie told him to leave, then slept almost constantly to escape the fear. Each time he woke it was in shock, afraid they might have taken away his choice. Doctors did that to people all the time in his experience, by right of their greater knowledge. Hurt hand? Cut it off, that'll fix it! God! He shuddered. Bodie was used to the idea of making judgement calls, of dealing with the consequences, not of being the consequence.

Wherever would he be without his right hand? Shuffling to collect his pension, head hanging with his sense of guilt, his failure.

Bodie grinned fiercely at the thought. Idiot. Incompetent? Dependent? He ushered the fear to where it belonged, a good forty years away. The future was a foreign country, where he might well choose to sit and mourn his losses, toast his memories, a creaking aging bachelor in pieces, keeping warm under ancient newspapers with the rest of the depressed veterans. Or, he might just never bother with all that. The best thing about foreign countries, one could visit or simply choose not to go.

No, he was _fine_. Whole, hearty, sane, and definitely not in a weeks-long recovery from the emotional shock of nearly losing his hand, riding the cresting wave, the surging emotion and ambitions and heightened sex-drive which followed those near-speechless dire weeks of his, when even Doyle had been a bother. Amputation, what a joke. A bad joke, even worse than his usual. The doctors had been having him on.

Clench, release, clench. Pain coming and rising each time, no phantom agony, but real. Bodie avoided looking at the injury; it was getting better. It had been so long. It had to be getting better.

The sooner people believed him, Bodie knew, the sooner he would believe it himself.

  



End file.
